Burning Atlanta

No, maybe not all. Some may try to deal drugs or steal, but the single biggest reason they're here is for the MONEY. And EVERYTIME the job market dries up, whether thru enforcement or a slowing economy, they go away. I've seen this proven time after time.

In Farmer's Branch, even before the vote on landlord laws requiring them to look into immigration status, the illegals got the hell out of town. Same thing in Hazelton. Same thing in Arizona and Oklahoma. They don't even know how many thousands of illegals have left.

Currently, because of the very meager efforts of the fed, illegals are wetting themselves. The reason is that bad news travels fast and they are all sorts or rumors flying around. I bet if I parked a panel truck painted up to look anything like an ICE vehicle, and parked it in the right spot, it could cause a total panic.

So, in the immediate aftermath of the Suffolk law being passed they go out and interview a few illegals. They are not happy.

Too damned bad. Get out.

On the streets of some Latino communities on Long Island Wednesday, news of Suffolk County's bill targeting undocumented workers set off a wave of wild rumors that federal immigration agents were about to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Many people were misinterpreting Spanish-language news reports about the bill, believing it signaled a start to a round of raids, said Sister Margaret Smyth, head of the Catholic Church's Hispanic Apostolate on the North Fork.

"Since Wednesday, we've been getting calls from people all in a panic, saying immigration is coming to get them," Smyth said. "Now everybody's in a panic."

Some workers said they'd been threatened before, but they are still out there working. Mouths to feed, they said, are a powerful incentive. "We're not criminals, we're workers," one man, Miguel, 30, from Honduras, said in Spanish. "If they deport 5,000 of us, 20,000 more will come." WRONG. Not if there are no jobs for them.

Despite that defiant stance, some said they feared the proposal will make a bad work situation even worse. Smyth said that even before the bill passed the county legislature on Tuesday, the slow economy was prompting many illegal immigrants to give up and head back to their home countries. "Yes, absolutely, people are coming in here, and we're helping them get their tickets," she said. See ya.'

His friend, Marcelino Martinez, 33, said that if the new law made work even harder to get, "I might have to move back home" to Mexico. Good idea!

But a mile away on Horse Block Road, one painter eating lunch at a popular Latino restaurant, Fax Chix, cheered the new law. "If you work in America, you pay your taxes," said Diego Torres, 61, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent who lives in East Patchogue. "We're losing millions of dollars. I think it should be enforced and I hope it will be." Hurray. A true American who believes in playing by the rules.

The native-born American "is not going to work for $10 an hour," Miguel said. "We will. We are here, and nobody is going to get us out of here." Don't bet on it. But, as we know, we don't need to "round up and deport 12 million illegals." All we have to do is increase the heat.